"...difficile est saturam non scribere. Nam quis iniquae
tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus, ut teneat se..."
"...it is hard not to write Satire. For who is so tolerant of the unjust City, so steeled, that he can restrain himself... Juvenal, The Satires (1.30-32)
akakyakakyevich@gmail.com

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Requirements of the law

"European Union laws require
you to give European Union visitors information about cookies used on your
blog. In many cases, these laws also require you to obtain consent."

This warning appears in
the editing functions of this blog and I'll be honest, I never really paid any
attention to it. This bit of legal argle-bargle, to quote the late Justice
Scalia, was just another example of the usual boilerplate nonsense that you
have to expect in an increasingly bureaucratic society, something that the mind
dismisses without ever having processed the information in the first place.Now that I have noticed it, however, it seems
more than a little presumptuous, doesn’t it? First, there is the question of sovereignty:
can the European Union, which by its very name is clearly located in Europe,
order me, a citizen of this our Great Republic, to do anything?Second, how do I know which of my visitors
are from the European Union and which are not? I am not some international
Internet traffic cop who has the time and the energy to keep up with the people
who come here and then question them about who they are and where they come
from. Strange as it may seem to the European Union and the, I assume, very well
paid paper pushers who devised this rule, I have an actual life here in the
United States of America and that this actual life requires the majority of my
time and attention and does not require me to pay attention to the European
Union or its strictures about cookies and visitors.Third, as to the question of consent, I wish
to point out to the Eurodrone bureaucrats in Brussels who are behind the
aforementioned bit of legal argle-bargle that nobody is forcing anyone to read The Passing Parade—the management of
this blog can barely get the writer who provides the content here to write for the
damned blog—and so the question of consent is largely moot, unless, of course,
said Eurodrones are demanding that I get the reader’s consent, in which my
response is that you can go kiss my royal Irish ass, guys.

However, in the spirit of international
amity, I will point out that The Passing
Parade is not terribly fond of cookies, but that we do have a very nice
pineapple upside down cake that my mother makes from scratch and that on
occasion we will indulge in some freshly made gourmet doughnuts from the new
place across the street from the egregious mold pit wherein I labor for my
daily bread.If you are ever up this
way, I invite you to drop in and share a doughnut, unless you are intent on
getting me to follow European Union law, in which case I will call the police
and have you removed from the premises. Thank you for your time and attention.